Churchill War Rooms

The Churchill War Rooms is a museum on King Charles Street in London consisting of the World War II cabinet war rooms and a museum exploring the life of British statesman Winston Churchill. The Cabinet War Rooms were built from 1938 to 1939 underneath the Treasury building on Whitehall, and they opened on 27 August 1939, a week before Britain declared war on Nazi Germany at the start of the world war. From May 1940 to 28 March 1945, Churchill and his cabinet directed the war from the underground war rooms, protected by a concrete slab which prevented the Cabinet from being harmed during the Blitz. A total of 115 Cabinet meetings were held in the war rooms, and, after 28 March 1945, the Cabinet stopped holding meetings in the war rooms due to the halt of the German V-2 attacks on London. After the war, the War Rooms became redundant and abandoned, and, in 1982, the Imperial War Museum took over the rooms and opened them to the public on 4 April 1984. In 2005, a museum dedicated to Churchill's life was opened in the war rooms.